Environmental group sues Sacramento County
Published Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011

Friends of the Swainson's Hawk is trying to overturn an environmental impact report and approval for a 3,766-acre development in southeast Sacramento County that the county supervisors supported last December.

The environmental group filed a lawsuit this week to overturn the EIR for the Florin-Vineyard area project. The group's news release alleged that the county's EIR "falsely declares that Swainson's Hawk habitat loss from development of the area would be only a fraction of what it actually will be."

The group claims the county violated the California Environmental Quality Act and that the current plan will result in a loss of Swainson's Hawk habitat of 1,000 to 2,000 acres.

Friends of the Swainson's Hawk is a funded arm of the Sierra Club. Sierra Club started in SF, but is now an international Environmental interest group. I wish the above story explained that, because the above story is an example of an international special interest group, meddling in the affairs of local Sacramento developments. These lawsuits cost millions of tax payer and private dollars, raising the costs of local development and the costs of housing. -- G of Econ

I saw that there is a fence around the old Tower Books location on Watt and El Camino and as of this morning, the building is being bulldozed. Does anybody know if there is something planned to take its place? I looked up the construction company's website (tiltonpacific.com), but didn't find anything about current projects.

I saw that there is a fence around the old Tower Books location on Watt and El Camino and as of this morning, the building is being bulldozed. Does anybody know if there is something planned to take its place? I looked up the construction company's website (tiltonpacific.com), but didn't find anything about current projects.

This was going to be a Fresh and Easy Grocery store......but the company has been slow expanding into sac.....I think they are in the bay area and modesto so far......coming from So Cal

After the city of Folsom stopped requiring developers earlier this year to provide low-income units with every large residential project, housing advocates talked of filing suit.

It didn't take long.

Within months of the City Council's January vote, Legal Services of Northern California and the Public Interest Law Project sued the city on behalf of the Sacramento Housing Alliance to block the action.

The suit in Sacramento Superior Court urges the judge to halt the issuance of any building permits for market-rate housing and to block zoning changes until the issue is decided.

On its face, the lawsuit seems simple enough.

The Housing Alliance complains that by voting to quit the ordinance, which called for affordable units with large market-rate projects, the city lost a primary tool to ensure it will meet future housing needs for residents of all income levels.

"The city of Folsom really has not developed an impressive track record in producing affordable housing," said Brian Augusta, a board member for the Housing Alliance.

Instead, he said, the city over the past decade or so "has produced a tremendous number of high-end, single-family homes and lots of commercial development that has produced low-wage jobs in the retail sector."

Less apparent is that the stakes over the issue have risen significantly since the City Council voted in June to seek annexation of 3,500 acres south of Highway 50.

"The question everyone is asking is, without that inclusionary ordinance in place, are they the best stewards of this land?" Augusta said.

It's not the first time the city of Folsom has been sued over affordable housing.

The city settled a similar suit filed a decade ago by Legal Services of Northern California on behalf of a low-income Folsom resident. To help resolve that case, the city approved the very ordinance it abandoned at the start of this year.

The ordinance had required builders of residential projects with 10 or more units to set aside 15 percent of the homes for limited-income occupants.

With its elimination, voluntary initiatives would get the job done, city officials said in January.

The mandatory approach has not worked, council members said then, and it helped stymie market-rate projects by squeezing developers during the real estate slump.

"All you ideologues out there may think you have the theoretical solution" to getting affordable housing built, Councilman Jeffrey Starsky told members attending the council meeting.

But, he added, "this is the city that actually puts things on the ground and gets it done. You will see in the next 10 years we're going to actually build this stuff."

In the ongoing suit, the Housing Alliance complains that the city has failed to act in accordance with its own housing element, a document in which a community defines its future housing needs and the policies and the programs established to achieve them.

But Folsom City Attorney Bruce C. Cline said the city has other effective ways to ensure affordable housing outside of an inclusionary ordinance.

"Our City Council has remained committed to the production of affordable housing," Cline said. "Our method by which we choose to generate affordable housing is different than that of the Sacramento Housing Alliance."

City officials have long said that other initiatives for low-income properties are filling the breach within the next three years, including 215 units now under construction or in the pipeline.

USA Properties Fund has a 55-unit project on Greenback Lane that will be finished in eight months, said David Miller, Folsom's community development director.

Another affordable property developer, St. Anton Partners, is nearing a development agreement for 80 units, Miller said.

He said still another 80 affordable units by Lewis Development at Parkside are also on tap, pending the outcome of a lawsuit against the state over the future of redevelopment agencies.

FBI settles on Roseville site for regional headquarters
Sacramento Business Journal by Sanford Nax, Staff Writer
Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2012, 6:52am PDT - Last Modified: Tuesday, August 7, 2012, 7:53am PDT
Enlarge Image Officials in Roseville say the federal government has apparently settled on an almost 12-acre site in the Stone Point master planned community as the site of a new FBI regional office.

Sanford Nax
Staff Writer- Sacramento Business Journal
Email | Twitter | LinkedIn Officials in Roseville say the federal government has apparently settled on an almost 12-acre site in the Stone Point master planned community as the site of a new FBI regional office.

Nothing has been filed with the city, but John Sprague, CEO of the Roseville Community Development Corp., said FBI offices are expected to be consolidated onto the property, which is one of the few remaining commercial sites in the master planned project.

“It is our understanding that the FBI has focused on property within Stone Point, and now is out with an RFP to select a contractor,” he said.

Public records show Bank of the West sold the land for about $2 million in April to an entity called Cordova 83 LLC, which is connected to Pappas Investments of Sacramento. In a solicitation issued in November, the General Services Administration said it was looking for a developer to construct a building under a 20-year lease on 11.8 acres in Roseville. The project would be 121,511 rentable square feet, with occupancy expected in 2015.

Sprague said the development is evidence of Roseville’s desirability. “We’re very excited,” he said. “It continues to focus on the fact that Roseville is strong economically, and helps businesses be successful.”

Bank of the West took ownership of 44 acres at Stone Point in 2009 after developer Richland Planned Communities, which had carved off and sold portions of the master planned community to other developers for years until the real estate market collapsed, was unable to resolve outstanding debt that reached $29.5 million.

Suburban commercial property doesn’t get any more blue-chip than Stone Point; the acreage sits atop a hill off North Sunrise Avenue and it had been targeted for everything from a boutique hotel to homes bordering a natural ravine. Homebuilder Taylor Morrison is reportedly buying a large chunk in Stone Point too, according to real estate sources.

The "Centrage" development site (the lozenge-shaped lot in between Business 80 and the Union Pacific main line north of East Sac) is back in play. The previous plan was for about 400 single-family homes on 50 acres and a Greek Orthodox church. The current plan is still being formed but the church is out, as is the small mixed-use component. They also want to make the lots a bit bigger. Access will be via 28th Street and an outlet on Elvas Avenue, with a pedestrian/bike underpass on Alhambra. There is no plan for public transit to the site, so the project will be entirely car-dependent and single-use. Sounds basically like a slice of Elk Grove at East Sac prices.

The "Centrage" development site (the lozenge-shaped lot in between Business 80 and the Union Pacific main line north of East Sac) is back in play. The previous plan was for about 400 single-family homes on 50 acres and a Greek Orthodox church. The current plan is still being formed but the church is out, as is the small mixed-use component. They also want to make the lots a bit bigger. Access will be via 28th Street and an outlet on Elvas Avenue, with a pedestrian/bike underpass on Alhambra. There is no plan for public transit to the site, so the project will be entirely car-dependent and single-use. Sounds basically like a slice of Elk Grove at East Sac prices.

Hate this. It adds nothing to the city- but more crappy McMansions. I would rather the site be turned into a park and joined with the future Sutter's Landing Park with a ped./bike bridge across Cap City Freeway.

OK now you can tell me why it's such a horrible idea and why it could never happen.

Hate this. It adds nothing to the city- but more crappy McMansions. I would rather the site be turned into a park and joined with the future Sutter's Landing Park with a ped./bike bridge across Cap City Freeway.

That sounds like a great idea to me--there is already a small bridge off Cap City Freeway that connects to Sutter's Landing Park that would be ideally suited to ped/bike traffic, and until as recently as 2005 this site was still an orchard. Considering that the Mayor wants to promote Sacramento as the "Farm to Fork" Capital, this part of Sutter's Landing could be very easily used as an orchard/park (with a "pick your own fruit" feature in harvest season) and urban farm, with a nonprofit urban-farming business partner like Soil Born Farms working in conjunction with the city. Because it is centrally located, it would be a great urban amenity while showing off regional strengths. It might also be a great site for the solar power project that was planned for Sutter's Landing itself, which would provide shade for park visitors.

Quote:

OK now you can tell me why it's such a horrible idea and why it could never happen.

Because Angelo Tsakopoulos owns the site, and he makes his money by turning farmland into crappy McMansions.

Sounds like a great idea to me--now it's just a matter of convincing Angelo to donate the land and enough money to build a park. Typically anything that AKT "donates" is a lever to get more sprawlburbs built, like the Greek Orthodox church which was supposed to relocate to the Centrage site (which has since pulled out), or the proposed college site on his planned suburbs near Roseville, or the proposed college that pulled out of the recently-approved Cordova Hills, one-third owned by AKT's brother George.

Sacramento's recent decision to ease restrictions on big-box stores did more than put the city back in the mix for future Wal-Mart and Target stores.

The politically charged City Council vote last month appears to have rejuvenated the city's efforts to build Delta Shores, a community of 5,000 housing units with a regional shopping center long planned for empty land along Interstate 5 near the Meadowview neighborhood.

The Delta Shores developer, Merlone Geier Partners of San Diego, aims to attract up to four big-box retailers to its freeway center, a critical step to finance development of the 800-acre project.

Merlone Geier lobbied for the rules change. Representatives said their retail project could be delayed or even canceled without help competing for major retail tenants.

"Anchor tenant deals are not the easiest to put together, and limiting competition only makes it that much more difficult," Merlone Geier spokesman Gary Muljat wrote in an email to The Sacramento Bee.

He said his company is in talks with retailers but declined to say which ones. Several retail and land planning professionals said the eased rules should bring once-reluctant Wal-Mart into the mix.

Unlikely. Think Southern North Natomas. Technically they're calling it "transit-oriented" because the Blue Line will run a few blocks east of its eastern edge, through a disused park that is mostly a gang hangout, but the entire subdivision is facing away from the transit line towards I-5.

I really hope this project is more than a Wal Mart surrounded by McMansions. The last thing that area needs is brand new 2-story houses that don't fit into the surrounding area. Some smart urban development would be nice.

I think if we get any amount of TOD near the new light rail station it'll be a win. Can't say my hopes are high for the areas near the highway, but maybe something a bit better will come out of the "Town Center" area in this old site plan...

Based upon this old rendering..

I particularly like this street design site plan better too as it at least has much better street connectivity.

__________________
Yeah, I'm like an even less classy version of Tucker Max. - Snodrifter

The huge parking lots in front of the "power center" retail just doesn't scream TOD to me. It screams "Only the car is welcome here." Light rail is an afterthought on the back end of the neighborhood...to use light rail to get to that retail area, you have to walk through the whole neighborhood across those dang parking lots.

There's no such thing as transit-oriented development transit. Light rail is, at best, the "servant's entrance" here--it isn't even within the project boundary.

The huge parking lots in front of the "power center" retail just doesn't scream TOD to me. It screams "Only the car is welcome here." Light rail is an afterthought on the back end of the neighborhood...to use light rail to get to that retail area, you have to walk through the whole neighborhood across those dang parking lots.

There's no such thing as transit-oriented development transit. Light rail is, at best, the "servant's entrance" here--it isn't even within the project boundary.

So true, also they should use that space between shops as a pedestrian square where people can hangout.

So true, also they should use that space between shops as a pedestrian square where people can hangout.

Ahh I can already hear the sheltered suburban outcry of the city building a gathering place custom built for gang members!

Agreed that this development looks like the opposite of TOD. As Wburg said the light rail is disconnected and physically separated from the rest of the development. It's better than what were used to around here though so I suppose that's a start.

Anybody have any links to the type of housing in the development? I remember hearing that west of I5 is primarily large lot single family McMansions, but I'm guessing there will be some sort of higher density lower and middle income housing in there somewhere? Or at least I hope there would be!

Also, what, if any, effect will the recent attempted changes to the city's low-income housing ordinance have on this development?

The current requirement is 15% low/very low income housing, 85% market rate. "Low-income" in this context means affordable to a single person making about $40,000 a year, "very low" more like $30,000 a year, or slightly more in each case for a larger household. So an apartment that charges about $1000 a month rent counts as "low-income" housing in a development like this. Not sure how the changes in policy will affect this--it was approved under the previous rules.

According to the Land Use table, the "high-density" portion will be about one-third of the units, 15-27 units per acre--in other words, a population density roughly like the less dense portions of Midtown. About half the site is called "medium density residential," about 8-14 units per acre, more like East Sacramento or Land Park (or the downtown central business district...). The rest will be 4-7 units per acre, more like River Park or South Land Park. The "sweet spot" for transit-oriented development is considered closer to 50-60 dua.

So the project next to the new Morrison Creek LRT station is/was called Stone Boswell which was last proposed by now bankrupt Dunmore Homes. Hopefully whoever claimed that property in the cleanup from Dunmore's bankruptcy will propose something a bit more dense.

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Yeah, I'm like an even less classy version of Tucker Max. - Snodrifter